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Is this the beginning of the end for our health service?
THE dismemberment of the National Health Service has begun.
This statement would have been dismissed as scaremongering two or three years ago.
But the takeover of three surgeries in Camden – expected to be signed and sealed this week – by UnitedHealth, one of the biggest health monopolies in America, could well signal the beginning of the end of the NHS.
Some doctors, who have been following the manoeuvres of UnitedHealth, first bidding for a GP practice in Derbyshire, now swooping on surgeries in the borough, calculate that even at a medium-paced acquisition of GP practices by UH and other companies, that most general practitioners in the UK will end up as salaried staff of private companies within the next 10 years.
Gone will be the unique service provided since the creation of the NHS in 1948, a service envied throughout the world. Gone will be the personal attention given by family doctors who have often known their patients for decades. In will come salaried doctors who may only remain in a surgery for a year or two before moving on. The pickings for UH and other companies are enormous. By now their accountants would have totted up the potential profit even from a small practice of 2,000 patients which, on average, would have an annual budget of about £2 million, funded by a primary care trust.
Imagine, say with a profit margin of 20 per cent-plus in their sights, what companies could make from bigger practices of 20-30,000 patients. And if, as appears to be on the government agenda, private companies set up GP desks in hospital A&E departments, the profits will simply roll in. Profits drawn, effectively, from a financial base supplied by taxpayers and profits ploughed back to overseas investors, probably to shareholders, in the main, in the US.
This is the future – and many angry citizens saw it at the protest meeting held at the Town Hall on Tuesday.
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